Predictive, Digital Whiteboard Autocompletes Data Charts

Microsoft Research has unveiled an interactive whiteboard for telling stories with data using freeform sketching. ‘SketchInsight‘ would make it easier for users to create compelling presentations.

Custom data charts can be drawn quickly and easily using this new system, as it is able to generate them by transforming simple line drawings. As the user starts to sketch, the predictive whiteboard can automatically complete the chart by synthesizing from example sketches.

SketchInsight enables users to create interactive data charts, graphs, maps, and other data representations. In the video released by Microsoft Research, an ‘L’ shape is drawn on the whiteboard and transformed into an x/y axis for a graph.

As the labels for each axis are being written, like ‘ye’ for ‘year’ and ‘pop’ for ‘population’, SketchInsight offers up possible data sets. Informing the whiteboard that it will be tracking population by year, it is able to autocomplete the graph. The user is then able to interact with the drawings to change different elements or focus on particular areas that are of interest. You can check out the whiteboard in the video below: